The Mu'Allaqa of Ibn Tarafa

VIDA

Tarafah ibn al 'Abd ben Sufyan ben Malik al Bakri of the tribe of
the Bakr ben Wa'il was born in 543 AD in Bahrein on the Persian Gulf. His
father died when he was still a child. His mother's brothers, bound by
law & custom to take him in, were greedy & scornful men who neglected
his education & robbed him of his rightful inheritance. As soon as
he was old enough, Tarafah took to women, wine & gambling. He got so
crazy his scandalized tribe kicked him out. So he took to the road with
his camel, erring from country to country. Some said he went as far as
Abyssinia. According to the tales, he divided his time between raiding
the live stock & women of other tribes, & stopping in oases to
meditate on the meaning of life. After a disastrous attempt to reintegrate
his tribe he went back to his nomadic-bohemian ways, now adding poetry
to his activities. He became known as a poet, a sha'ir -- literally, "one
who knows." This nomads' nomad came one
day to the court of Hira where he met up with his uncle, Al Mutalammis
and his brother-in-law, Abd Amr ben Bichr, both renowned poets. Amr ben
Hind, the king, has heard that Tarafah was a sha'ir & thus received
him weel & made him one of his familiars. Hira was in those days a
rich & opulent city, burning like a star & drawing people like
a magnet. But Tarafah, the nomad-poet & free Beduin was to have have
a rough time of it among the sedentary hierachies. "The butterfly
was to burn his wings on this flame," as a commentator has it. Unable
-- & unwilling -- not to speak out. First he antagonized his brother-
in-law, accusing him of mistreating his sister, Al Khirniq. Then he composed
a satire on king Amr himself & on the latter's brother, prince Qabus.
The enraged brother-in-law used the occasion to turn the king against Tarafah,
who, as they say, thus "dug his grave with his tongue." The royal
revenge against the poet was not long in coming. Tarafah & his uncle
received letters from the king to be taken to the latter's governor in
Bahrein. On the road Al Mutalammi became suspicious, broke the seal &
read the letter: it was his death warrant. He tore it to pieces & told
his nephew to do the same, but Tarafah refused to even open his letter.
When they reached Bahrein they went to see the governor who happened to
belong to the Bakr, Tarafah's own tribe. The governor read the letter &
told Tarafah to get out as fast as his camel could run. The nomad-poet
refused so the governor has him thrown in jail & wrote the king: "Name
another governor. I refuse to have this young man executed." The king
complied with this request, naming a new governor who belonged to the tribe
of the Beni Taghli who had long lived in enmity with the Bakr. This man
told Tarafah:" I have to kill you one way or the other. Which way
would you prefer to die. The choice is yours." Tarafah's answer was:
"Fill me with wine all the way up to the throat. Then bleed me."
Which is what happened: Tarafah shed his life like a punctured goat-skin
sheds its wine. That was in 569 AD, & Tarafah wasn't thirty yet. His
tribe bemoaned his death & his sister, the poet Al Khirniq, composed
a glorious ode in his memory.

The translation of Tarafa's ode (incomplete, here) is itself a nomadic
process: obviously incapable of rendering the form -- not only the monorhyme
scheme & the complex meters are impossible in English, but even more
troublesome is the high rhetoric structure, something so alien to contemporary
American poetry & voice as to be inadmissible. In fact all translations
that try to reproduce it sound like bad late Victorian or Tennysonian orientalism.
My nomadic translation then comes via a nearly Japanese, haiku-ess decision
to lopp off the rhetoric, leave the image clusters & organize them
(shades of Williams' three stepped lines) into short stanzas. Here it is:

Khawla's abandoned camp site :

an old tattoo's fading glow

on the schist slopes of Thamad mountain

Between brown lips her

smile mirrors marigolds

unfolding in white sand on a dew-wet dune

the sun lent it its rays --

black antinomy darkened her gums

never touched a tooth

If you look for me among the assembled sages

you'll find me -- you'll find me too

in the taverns where they sell wine

When late at night she sings for us

my illustrious companions's faces

light up like novas

Come off it! you who tell me not to fight &

not to fuck, if ever I did quit,

could you offer me immortality?

As you cannot save me from death

let me offer death, right now,

all this hand can hold.

I wouldn't give a damn

to know the hour of my death

if it weren't for these three:

first -- & quit bugging me about it --

the pleasure of an old wine that foams

as soon as you add water

then there is the call from someone in need:

I come running, hunched over,

a tamarisk wolf sensing water

& last but not least the joy in shortening a cloudy day

laying a well-fleshed lady

under a firmly pitched tent.

I have spent my life generously drinking

at its source . if death should come tomorrow

whose throat would be parched?

No matter how fast a man runs

death is a long leash

its other end firmly grasped

& the days will lay

bare what you don't

yet know &

someone will refuse you bread

someone will come bringing news:

a traveller with no luggage & no invitation.

Translated by Pierre Joris via the original Arabic &
various French & English versions.